Staccato
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: Tayuya of the Leaf (formerly of the Sound) has a new gig as one of Danzo Shimura's spooks. They could have killed her when they scraped her up off of the forest floor, so maybe doing their dirty work is her way of saying thanks. When a mission goes sideways, she finds herself assigned to the worst punishment detail imaginable: Putting up with that whisker-faced freak.


The killing started at noon.

Fuckers never saw it coming. Which was entirely the point.

What kind of dumbass sprung an ambush when the other guys saw it coming? Might as well go running naked down the middle of the street with a Roman candle blasting its way out of your ass.

There was a story to be told in a spectacle like that, she supposed, but a job well done meant there wouldn't be anyone alive enough to tell the story of how those fucks died in the first place.

Jian wasn't running the op, but she could appreciate a good in-and-out job. Clear and coherent points of exit and entry. A timetable everyone know how to stick to. A squad that wasn't full of jerkoffs.

She didn't exactly like Tanto, Sai, or Ricky, but they weren't so bad, she guessed. Tanto wasn't two-faced. Sai wasn't a fatass. Ricky had the decency to have only two arms.

Her lips curled first into a scowl and then into a few carefully chosen notes as her fingers wandered the familiar dimension of her flute. She could play the thing blindfolded. It was a custom make. So was the mask that allowed her to play the damn thing in the first place. That damn flute was half the reason Commander Cyclops recruited her in the first place, so there wasn't any point in putting her in the mask if it kept her from playing it.

From her perch atop the apothecary shop, Jian saw the Sand sentry sag back into a genjutsu-induced stupor a scant six seconds before Ricky, his monkey mask glaring in the stifling summer sun, rounded the corner of the wind-whipped, sandblasted building and sidled up next to the drooling retard. He slid the kunai across the sentry's throat as casually as you might open a letter. He was rewarded with a nice, strong arterial spray. Ricky had the common sense to catch the guy as he fell and ease him down into sand that was everywhere in this hellhole of a country. Didn't want the telltale thump of a dropping body alerting anyone inside.

But they wouldn't have noticed it anyway. As long as she kept up her "hear no evil, see no evil" genjutsu.

It had a name. A big, long, fancy, fan-fucking-tastical name that Boss Snakeface (no, not Boss anymore) taught her once upon a time but Hell if she was going to commit to memory. Did the trick work? Sure. Had it been one of the many little oddities in her bag of tricks that had kept her alive for all these years? She wouldn't have been sweating her tits off if that was a "no."

Just thinking of tale, pale and scaly had soured her mood all over again. She watched belly shirt Sai follow Ricky into the building about thirty seconds later and mechanically took her cue to move up, moving more on instinct and repetition than any real desire to bail those two out of trouble. Who were they to her? Who was she to them? They all wore masks and went by codenames these days. If she bumped into any one of them on the street, would she know it?

At least moving into the ground floor of the building put her in the shade. Thank God. She could already feel her neck peeling with the beginnings of a hellacious sunburn. Maybe she could nag someone about summer and winter gear when she got back to base. Seemed kind of dumb to expose your best black ops agents to the elements when they were already plunging facefirst into enemy territory.

As her eyes adjusted to the low light of the building, she felt her world spin and lurch and assault her fragile little eyes with a garish collection of colors that only the high-fallutin' would find attractive.

So this was a silk merchant's shop, huh?

Reams upon reams and bolts upon bolts of the softer, finer things jauntily winked at her as she strode past this display and that. She could only imagine the pretty little things who would walk this space, trailing their fingers over those fine silks before turning to shoot their poutiest of pouts at their father/husband/john/who-the-fuck-ever who was bankrolling the shopping spree.

Jian felt a treacherous few fingers fall away from her flute and start inching toward one particular piece of fabric that reminded her her mother's cornsilk yellow hair.

She felt a stab of envy at those soft, pampered things who had never known hunger or cold or pain.

Then she stabbed it right back.

What a stupid feeling, envy was. She would only ever be herself, and she was damn good at it.

Fuck those stupid cunts, fuck her mother for going and dying on her, and fuck this place. She would burn it to the ground on the way out of town. Sure, Tanto would chew her out for it later. Blah, blah, mission parameters. Blah, blah, rules of engagement. Blah, blah, Tanto could go fuck himself right in that same ass with the tallest cactus they passed on the way to this godforsaken place.

But would he have enough room in his rectum when he already had such a big stick up there?

Then Jian heard the high, reedy wail of someone cut bad enough to die without doing the world the decency of dying quickly and quietly. The acapella performance of 'Oh Fuck, I Am Bleeding Everywhere' was soon joined by a handful of percussionists slamming steel into steel.

Her head snapped up, and she traced the sounds of battle to a chintzy green curtain shoved in the back corner of the shop. One look into the shadows beyond told her this was the not-so-secret passage they would take into the basement to eliminate their real targets. The sentry had been standing guard for them.

Jian let out a big, hearty "Fuck me!' at her lapse in concentration and launched herself into hidden alcove, her fingers, lips and lungs working up a solo for the ages.

* * *

Boss Cyclops was pissed.

He didn't let it show on his oh-so-fucked face. Oh, he had one hell of a poker face underneath that headwrap. Just who had he pissed off in his misspent youth to get all dolled up like a mummy?

He gave nothing away. He didn't sneer or scowl or shout or roll his eye.

He just stared with that one, beady, mean little eye. He stared into her soul. And then he stared some more.

She really wished he didn't make all of his lackeys kneel. Her legs were starting to get stiff. Couldn't he eyefuck her into oblivion without giving her cramps?

"Agent Jian," said Danzo Shimura. "Agent Tanto submitted a report indicating that your negligence compromised agents Sai and Chigiriki. As a direct result, this mission ended in the death of a fellow agent and the severe injury of another."

There came a pause so pregnant it could have been carrying octuplets.

"Do you deny it?"

"Should I?"

None of that really mattered to Tayuya (yes, she was Tayuya now; Jian's mask was strapped to her hip along with all the baggage it carried). She dimly wondered which one was getting stitched up and which one was wormfood, but he wouldn't say. Boss Cyclops only ever gave as much as she needed to know, and she obviously didn't need to know.

This wasn't even about them. It was about her. If Boss F decided she was a liability these days, then she be joining one of them in the cold and the dark. If Boss F still had patience for her, she would live. It wouldn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, so why should it make much of a difference to her?

She was a survivor, her mother had told her once upon a time. What fucking good did that do anyone? You get to keep sucking air for a little longer. Great.

She was ready to die for Boss Snakeface. She was ready to die for this new boss man. There wasn't any real difference between them. This one was older and crustier, but he freely used his people all the same. If this particular jian had lost its edge, he would throw it way.

Or maybe he would kick her back over to the good, clean, family-friendly folks of Torture & Interrogation, the proverbial forge where she would be melted down and reforged into a jian that had not lost its edge.

Perhaps her end would not be so dark and so cold after all.

"You will make amends," Danzo said, shaking her out of her navel-gazing funk. He had a habit of not giving her anything, but he had apparently decided that if she wasn't giving him anything back, then it was time to move this conversation along. Hallelujah. "I have assigned you to a mission originally meant for an agent you compromised. The mission scroll is waiting for you in your lodgings. You are to burn after reading and arrive at the West Gate to rendezvous with your new squadron no later than 1400."

Back-to-back missions, then.

Fuck.

Tayuya really didn't see how this could get any worse.

* * *

Oh, it got worse alright.

"Hey!"

Big baby blues squinting like they were about to pop.

"I know you, right?"

Hair the kind of blond that had to come out of a bottle.

"I do know you!"

Those stupid whisker marks that made him look like the kind of freak who wore cat ears and a leash to bed with his leather daddy dom.

"You're that lady!"

Orange so loud it was making her eyes go deaf.

"You're one of those Sound-nin who ran off with Sasuke!'

A pink head of hair snapped around so fast it was a wonder the lady ninja's head didn't pop off.

The unassuming man in the regular forces flak jacket and the weird face-armor cleared his throat to head everyone off at the pass.

"Good morning, everyone. My name is Yamato, and I'm going to be taking Kakashi's place as the leader of Team Kakashi while he is out. I hope we can all get along."

Fat fucking chance.


End file.
